


No Downside to Up

by jenny_of_oldstones



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age II
Genre: Anal Sex, M/M, Sexual Experimentation, Sexual Insecurity, Size Difference, Size Kink, brief mention of childhood sexual abuse by another child, vanilla sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-13
Updated: 2014-09-23
Packaged: 2018-02-17 07:02:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2300714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenny_of_oldstones/pseuds/jenny_of_oldstones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fenris wants to try a new position in bed.</p>
<p>Easier said than done. Dragons and sexual doubts ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Wait." Fenris straightened his arms and lifted himself from his familiar place between Hawke's legs. "I wish to try something else."

"Oh?" Hawke sat up on his elbows. It had taken a long time to coax Fenris into taking initiative, let alone making changes to their comfortable routine. His heart thundered in anticipation. "This isn't something Isabela suggested, is it?"

Fenris snorted and flopped over on his back, his arousal twitching against his stomach. He spread his legs and patted his thighs. When Hawke didn't move, he repeated the gesture, as if signalling a dog to hop up in his lap.

It took a moment for Hawke to catch on.

Then he burst out laughing.

"You wish me to ride you?" he said, and then to staunch the stung pride on Fenris' face, "I'm sorry, love. It's just...."

"Indulge me," said Fenris.

Hawke lay on his side, sweating in a super-heated white square of sunlight from where the curtains were thrown back from the windows of his bedroom. "You can't be serious."

"Why not?" Fenris frowned, and Hawke could feel the conversation teetering dangerously towards the defensive. "I have done the same for you dozens of times."

"Yes...." It was one of the few positions in which Fenris let himself be taken. Hawke relished it, especially when he could warm Fenris into sitting reverse in his lap, back to chest, holding his soft throat against his shoulder and fucking him until his legs opened wide in helpless pleasure. It was a rare gift, and one he cherished. "But it's not the same."

"I fail to see how." Again, that ugly note of hurt. Fenris was nothing but quick to judge a slight where there was none.

"Fenris." Hawke squinted against the sun. "I'm too big."

'Big' was an understatement. Hawke was easily a head above Fenris in height and three times the bulk. It had caused snickering among their companions. Whereas no one would call Fenris 'dainty' until he stood next to Hawke, he was still an elf with the willowy build of his race. Hawke, on the other hand, might as well have been half-Qunari--his back muscles like anvils and his neck thick as a bull's. Isabela had once joked that their sleeping arrangement must look like a secret tryst between the Arishok and Merrill, and he couldn't argue she was far off the mark.

"I'll squash you," said Hawke.

Fenris rolled his eyes. "You will not 'squash' me. "

"It'll look ridiculous."

"I believe you were the one who once told me there is no elegant way to go about such things."

So he had. And now the words came back to bite him. And yet....

It was true: Fenris had ridden him dozens of times, without a shred of embarrassment. But the idea of all six and a half feet of him balancing on Fenris' slim hips, towering over his slight elvhen lover....his body twisted in shame at the thought, as if it was a brighter shaft of sunlight he couldn't look at.

Still, those puppy eyes....

Hawke sighed. Reluctantly, he swung a leg across Fenris' hip-

-and collapsed into giggles. He started to pull away and Fenris slapped a hand on his thigh to hold him in place.

"Hawke...." he said, half-warning, half-pleading.

"I'm sorry, it's just-" He rolled away into a ball in the silk sheets like a snickering hedgehog. "Like a clydesdale mounting...." He couldn't help it. "A house cat!"

"You never seemed to have this problem before," murmured Fenris. He swung his feet onto the floor. The mattress creaked under him as he got out of bed.

Hawke bit off a laugh. He recognized, under the heavy brows and sarcasm, the note of deep insecurity and hurt in Fenris' voice. Fenris, who was so quick to see himself as unworthy, as the eternal butt of a joke beyond his grasp and always at his expense.

As he must have felt endlessly as a slave.

_Dammit._ The morning was ruined and it was all his fault. Hawke stroked his flagging erection, alone in bed, and knew there was no saving it. Cold water on cold ashes. All the warmth of ten minutes ago given over to clammy skin and hurt feelings. He sighed and sat up. It was uncomfortably hot under the sunlight.

"It's different when you do it," said Hawke gently. "You're suited to it. Physically."

"But when I ask you, it's 'ridiculous?'" Fenris was tugging on his breeches. He padded around the bedroom, picking up pieces of armor, yanking his vest from under where the snoozing mabari had rolled over on it.

"Fen, please," said Hawke, trying his best 'darling, let's not fight' voice he had heard his mother use a thousand times on his father with limited success.

"I have an appointment with the blacksmith." Fenris was already unlocking the door. He tugged it behind him with a not-quite civil _snap_. A moment later Hawke heard his bare footfalls thudding down the stairs, then the scuff of his rough heels across the stone floor of the foyer and out the front door.


	2. Chapter 2

It was a rare morning when the Champion of Kirkwall expected no visitors. Hawke took it as an excuse to stay in bed and thumb through stacks of old correspondence. Within five minutes he tossed the letters aside and, with a sigh that sank all the way to his toes, slid a hand down his stomach.

Hawke rolled his half-hard cock in hand, playing over what happened. It wasn't a fight exactly, but Fenris had left with his feelings hurt, or at least the impression that Hawke had laughed at him for something he couldn't understand.

And what was there to understand? Hawke didn't pester Fenris into acts he didn't want to do in bed, so why should the reverse be different?

"Because you called making love to him ridiculous," he said to no one.

Barnabas farted agreement from his dog bed.

Hawke sighed. Why deny it. It wasn't just the size difference that made it seem ridiculous, he actually felt shame when he swung a leg over Fenris.

 _Wonder why,_ a dark little voice whispered.

His cock wilted. Aggravated, he lurched out of bed and grabbed an open wine bottle off the floor (a figgy purple Fenris loved but Hawke couldn't stand), and took a swig. He swished it around his teeth and spat in the fire.

The truth was, it wasn't sex with Fenris that shamed him. It was that before Fenris he'd never let a man fuck him, and part of him still felt humiliated by it.

It wasn't hard to see how he'd gotten this way. In all his wild youth in Ferelden, he'd never once let himself be taken. The mere suggestion turned his guts to water. There was only one reason anyone would want to do that to a man of his size: to make themselves feel powerful and him powerless-

His eyes stung. He took another pull.

The Maker must have a cruel sense of humor indeed to make him fall for an elf who nine times out of ten needed to be on top.

Maybe that's why it seemed so unfair to be asked to ride Fenris. Since the beginning of their relationship Hawke had kept his feelings about their arrangement to himself, but it did nothing to silence old doubts. He turned over in his head what it would look like, if someone walked in on the huge Champion of Kirkwall moaning like a whore on his petite lover's cock and riding himself to climax.

He would never live it down.

Hawke washed his face with a palm. It would be so much easier if he hated the feeling of Fenris inside him, if the humiliation of being penetrated wasn't equal parts infuriating and arousing. On the best days, it made for erotic power play. On the worst, it turned him into a neurotic, obsessed that their relationship remain as versatile as possible, keeping mental tallies of who had fucked who, tormented by the idea that he might find himself permanently in the role of the-

Sip rinse spit. Hawke started gathering his clothes. Maybe he was ruining a good thing, worrying about what others might think. But Hawke had been laughed at enough in his life. He wasn't interest in making a fool of himself anymore.

Barnabas pricked his ears. A knock rattled the door.

"Um, Messere?"

"Bodahn, unless the house is on fire there'd better be a damned good reason why we're talking at eight bells."

"I know I know, but it's um, Messere Hubert. He's sat himself down in the foyer and I'm afraid he won't be put off. He's been pacing for the past half hour and I-I don't know what tell him."

 _Andraste's ass._ There was only reason Hubert would come uninvited outside their regular monthly meetings. And if there was one thing he knew about the man, he'd pitch a tent outside Hawke's door today if it meant it might save him a handful of coppers tomorrow.

"Send him up." Hawke tugged on his trousers and tunic. If Hubert was going to drag him into business at this ungodly hour on a Sunday morning, then he was going to get the full unwashed Sunday package. He sat down at his desk and waited.

A minute later the door banged open and cracked the wainscoting. Hubert swirled in and wasted no time slopping his ledger across Hawke's cluttered papers.

"Catastrophe has struck, partner! We are ruined! _Ruined!_ "

If Hubert noticed or cared that said partner was still in bed clothes, he didn't comment.

"Giant spiders again?" said Hawke, watching Hubert step over Barnabas so he could pace the floor.

"Worse! None of the workers came home last night. I sent a man in a cart to see what happened, and the only thing that came back was the horse! And he's not speaking! Town full of rotten mages and not one can get answers from a horse?"

Hawke tapped a nail against his wine bottle. For six years he'd worked shoulder to shoulder with Hubert, and still couldn't decide if he liked the man or loathed him. Depending on the day, Hubert either treated him like a beloved apprentice or a shit-sniffing wolf boy wearing shoes on his head and a doublet around his arse--the latter usually on days when he and Jansen negotiated on behalf of the workers. Together they were a two-man torture device around Hubert, tightening his profit line thinner and thinner until he spluttered the most impressive plea of Orlesian profanities ever heard and admitted yes, they _could_ afford enchanted face masks to keep the miners from suffocating.

Still, it's not as if they didn't have fun, bonding over their little hideous blister in the earth where they routinely sent men and women to dig up splintered slave bones and awaken arcane horrors. And, occasionally, mine limestone.

"Let me guess, Carta botching shipments again?" asked Hawke.

"Unlikely. I found this lodged in the horse's backside."

Hubert held up a curved black fang and tossed it on the table. It hit the wood with a hard _clink._

"Dragons?" The word dropped the floor out of his stomach.

"So it would seem." 

Jansen flashed through his mind--had he been on duty last night? Hawke couldn't remember the schedule. If he had been....

"But that's impossible. We cleared the nest."

"And apparently did a typical job!" Hubert spun, took in the empty bottles on the floor and, in an act of shocking impropriety, snatched up an unopened Antivan red. Hawke watched him pop the cork and take a deep, very un-Hubert pull.

"How many of those have you had this morning?"

"Don't lecture me, Ferelden." Hubert stared down at Barnabas as if trying to decide whether or not he was a decorative rug. "I'm from Val Royeux. I was born with wine in my veins."

"That bad?"

"If there is another dragon infestation, someone will talk, and if someone talks, my investors are going to get chilly. We'll have to take loans, sell off the capital, recoup our losses-"

"I meant more in the vein of all our workers might be dead."

" _Tch._ And when has that ever not been the case?"

Hawke pressed his fingers into his scalp. The thought of dozens of people roasted alive after he assured them it was safe....

He shoved it aside. Worrying wouldn't save the living or the dead. Instead, he considered the horrifying shape his future was now taking.

To call the dragon infestation six years ago a nightmare was an understatement. Each mine shaft in the Bone Pit was either connected to or a hard hammer crack away from a nest. For two weeks, Hawke and his friends crushed hundreds of eggs and culled scores of nestlings, hunting savage drakes as they darted shrieking down the sweltering tunnels. It was near the end of that slaughter that they finally encountered the bearded bitch of a mother-- a bloody tale all its own. The whole debacle had been the worst job of his life, and not even a year of dragon steaks could salve the fact that the better part of a decade later he still got stabbing pains from where a tail cracked two of his vertebra. The thought of undergoing even a fraction of that again.....

"Let me guess," said Hawke. "You want me to go down there and see what's happened."

"Today," said Hubert. "Before bandits scurry in and claim our equipment from the ruins."

A silken heart, him.

"You never considered that I might have something better to do today than get my backside cooked?" said Hawke wearily, leaning back to warm his face with sunshine.

"Of course not. I saw that tetchy elf of yours leave."

"That's quite pert of you."

"Then be more discreet." Hubert started to take another sip, then curled his nose in a very Orlesian sneer. "Is this the best year you have?"

"For you, yes." Hawke rose and tossed his robe over Hubert's head. By the time he ripped it off, Hawke was already lifting his armor off its stand in the corner.

"You'll go now?" he asked.

"I'll go now," said Hawke. He shot the merchant a warning glare. "For the workers."

"Of course." Hubert's long fingernails tapped music against his bottle. "And the equipment-"

" _Workers._ " The next twenty minutes were spent stretching Hawke's muscles, cinching belts, and arranging daggers until he took a few quick squats in front of the looking glass and decided, yes, good enough. He patted his leg and Barnabas twisted up with a ruff, making Hubert jump.

"Try not to get eaten," lamented Hubert, sounding genuinely anguished. "Kirkwall finds out their Champion was killed at the Bone Pit, they'll have my head."

"Wouldn't that be the worst?"

"You haven't been here as long as I have, these Free Marchers are mad for your title. Which reminds me, when you get back, I think I've cornered a market in Ostwick for men interested in your sweat-"

"Come along, coz." Hawke dragged him downstairs by the collar.

If nothing else, a few baby dragons breathing fire up his arse and biting his ankles might take his mind off Fenris.


End file.
